Enjoy these bloopers from book manuscripts I’ve edited:
The buzzard sounded and the basketball game commenced.
If the game gets out of hand, the buzzard can referee, too!
Standing at her kitchen sink, Lisa’s idle hands rested in the warm sudsy water.
Those hands just can’t decide whether to stand or sit.
Scott noticed the dreamy look that entranced [...]
I was helping an author revise the bio that would appear on his book’s back cover. Here’s the copy he sent me:
I have been a widower since 1978, when my wife pasted away from cancer, we had 11 children of which 3 have past away.
We’ll ignore the run-on and jump straight to this sentence’s sticky [...]
When Starbucks passed out pink slips to 100 workers Friday, they called in the big guns (aka, company spokeswoman Anna Kim-Williams) to deliver the bad news.
The spokeswoman’s prepared statement said:
“Some of these partners are being offered opportunity for redeployment and others will be separated from the company.”
Partners?
Redeployment?
Separated?
Talk about a decaf statement! Those are some of [...]
And I so desperately hoped Mr. Ed would be reading these, or Stewart Little, or one of Dr. Doolittle’s buds!
I realize they’re trying to promote a benefit, that their books aren’t computer read, but does everyone know about computer reading software? Probably not.
And why not turn a feature into a benefit? Human narrated is a [...]
I regularly create media kits for authors. The authors I work with complete an extensive survey, answering questions about their background, their book’s content, and how they’d like to see their book publicized. I incorporate their responses into a press release, author bio, book recap, catalog copy, and so on.
Here is one author’s response to [...]
That fella’s the raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth. -The Music Man
You can almost feel it, can’t you? That tiny, irritating raspberry seed lodged in your tooth (or worse yet, in your gums).
A good metaphor or simile breathes life into a sentence. It helps the reader’s mind make fresh correlations between smells, sounds, taste, touch. [...]
Our popular Putrid Prose column (which runs every Monday) gently pokes fun at stinky writing (some of it, our own).
Here are a few of our favorite columns from the past year. Feel free to re-print the links on your own site:
Direct Mail Piece Stinks Up the Mailbox
http://heblogssheblogs.com/directmailputridprose/
Y’all, Ya’ll, Yawl: Which is Correct?
http://heblogssheblogs.com/yall-yall-yawl-which-is-correct/
Killing the Typo Ogre
http://heblogssheblogs.com/putrid-prose-killing-the-typo-ogre/
Hundred [...]
The Seattle Times has a weekly “Rant & Rave” column in which readers vent about poor customer service/rude drivers and rave about random acts of kindness.
Here’s a Rave that tickled my funny bone:
To the employee and the employee’s sister at Tacos Guaymas in Kenmore. They found an envelope containing a check that had fallen out [...]
I was ironing clothes and happened to catch an episode of Meet the Press. The topic: bailing out the auto industry.
Paul Ingrassia, Pulitzer Prize winner, former Detroit Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal, and contributing editor for Conde Nast Portfolio, commented to Tom Brokaw:
We hear a lot about hybrid cars, Tom. I think What [...]
Tackle this attribution exercise:
As I was skimming through a Young Adult adventure novel, I couldn’t help but notice the author’s use of attribution tags (said so-and-so). Here’s a sample, excerpted from five pages of dialog between the narrator (”I”) and her new friend, whom I’ll call “Sara.” I spelled each attribution tag exactly as the [...]